


Grave Dirt Pottery

by Beauteousmajesty



Series: Tiefling Time (in which I overthink tieflings) [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Non-Binary Character, Everyone Needs A Hug, Friendship, Gen, Hair Braiding, He/Him Pronouns for Mollymauk Tealeaf, Introspection, Piercings, Tattoos, Tiefling Biology, pre-episode 26
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beauteousmajesty/pseuds/Beauteousmajesty
Summary: Molly is fine. He doesn't wake from grave dirt nightmares if he sleeps wrong. He is fine. Every day he wakes to find new joy to lead him further from the grave he woke up in. He's aiming to make his life full so that he's no longer empty. And he's fine. He's fine. (He's a liar, but the finest performers all are).An exploration of Molly moulding himself from grave dirt into a vaguely functional adventurer with a little help from his friends.
Relationships: Gustav Fletching & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, The Mighty Nein & Mollymauk Tealeaf
Series: Tiefling Time (in which I overthink tieflings) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989235
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	Grave Dirt Pottery

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this for ageeeees now so I've decided it's done now. It's not quite the same vibes as the rest of tiefling time but whoops.
> 
> All dramatic irony is intentional and in there to cause you, personally, pain.
> 
> I love Molly so much

Molly is every inch a performer. He can act his way through discomfort; pave over his pain with a grin. He will be fine, he tells himself, just as long as nobody notices his problems.

He is a bright and colourful distraction for every town the carnival passes through. He lives to brighten up the townsfolk's days and avert their attention from mundane problems. If his distracting distracts himself, then that's alright too.

He loves it when the circus lights are bright enough that he cannot close his eyes and feel as if there is nothing before him but layers of rain drenched dirt. The acts take his breath away, but in a way that is so full of joy, of light, of life. They are anything but empty. 

He lives and breathes the carnival crowd. Each customer is a step further from the grave, a step further into the bright lights of the living. He learns to read tarot cards and works to expand the deck, picking up artistry watching Gustav fake his identity papers. Sehanine's cards and teachings let him see into a future that diverts from being that empty body in a grave.

When Yasha joins the circus, Molly sees himself in her. She, too, is running from some grave or another. They form a little amnesia crew, playing with Molly's cards but leaving the pasts empty. He gives her both kinds of reading, he draws love for both, and destiny, and revenge. Yasha lets him keep drawing cards, hunting out a future for them.

He spends a lot of time with Yasha, and with Toya, and Orna, and Gustav. They dance around each other and share skills and stories that are an equal split of bullshit and flair. Each member of the circus pushes their skill set into his idle hands and he delights to be distracted with cooking and needlework and tumbling. He learns to drive the cart and leads them all in a merry chase.

Some of the skills come easily. He picks up prop swords with hands that already know their feel and falls into a fighter's stance before anyone shows him how. The first time they let him spar he panics and watches one blade begin to glow as he slices his skin by reflex.

His sparring skills grow useful when an opportunistic local grabs him by the horns when he's had a few too many in a tavern. He plays dirty like Toya does when they play, and kicks out with enough force to free himself and dart away into the night to the bright tents of home.

He finds his way into Yasha's arms and she refuses to let him go to any tavern alone again, rubbing softly at the base of his horns where it hurts. 

She buys his first set of charms when it happens again; he is accosted on card duty and yanked halfway across the carnival field by his horns by an individual dissatisfied by his future. Yasha and Bo come to his rescue, but his head aches for the next week and he can barely tolerate any touch to his horns.

Yasha vanishes in the next town they arrive at, returning with her purse emptied of carnival wages and two delicately barbed chains in her hands. She has chosen symbols from his two favourite cards when she presents them to him, a dangling golden sun and a bright silver moon. Her fingers are gentle as she coils them around his horns and hooking the ends to his hair. He'll need more to keep his horns fully safe, but she has made an excellent start. So he hunts down a book for her to press flowers in, like he saw a Dragonborn doing in a town they passed through before she came. He gives it to her with a wayside daisy and a bright smile.

Later she sits with him as he gets his horns pierced, watching over the tiefling who has purposed her parlour for piercings as she drills her way through his horns before carefully sealing in piercing tubes. Yasha carefully carries him home after he decides on more piercings beyond the horns and lets him lean on her and whine for a week. She tells him he's very silly for it, but is happy to give him attention.

Once his piercings have healed enough for him to stop reclining dramatically over the back of the cart at every opportunity, he returns the favour by carefully learning complicated braids and working to untangle the mess of hair she had arrived with. It's slow work, but they spend their off evenings working on it, or on the cart journeys when talking goes beyond either of them and they make their own quiet amidst the noise of the circus.

He works on Toya's too, when she asks. He braids her hair into elaborate styles to perform and longs for the day when his cropped hair is long enough to play with. He buys beads for Yasha when he goes out to buy more charms for his horns and they decorate each other with no mirror to look at.

He is quieter, when Yasha leaves. Only the circus notice that he's more subdued. He is still a brilliant distraction for the towns they pass through, coat twirling with symbols, horns jingling with charms, and his swords shining as he juggles. He is his own show, spinning tales of pure bullshit to see where he will land. He plays the part excellently. To the people he meets he is Mollymauk Tealeaf of the carnival of curiosities, and they cannot imagine anywhere better for him.

When she returns, he throws himself into her arms and puts on his act for her. She can scoop him up easily, and she does, pulling out a new charm for his horn, as she tucks him up in one arm. He scrambles to kiss her on the cheek for a thank you, before refusing to be put down for the rest of the afternoon.

He refuses to part from her for the following week, sharing her bedroll and her space for as much as he's welcome. He sleeps well with her warmth, until he wakes in a panic under her weight, feeling once more the weight of earth on his body. She calms him down slowly -- even though he's not talking she figures out what's wrong -- pulling him on top of her like a blanket, rubbing behind the base of his horns with one finger until he falls asleep there. She is careful not to squish him again, renewing her watchful eye over him.

She follows him into the tavern at Trostenwald and watches him pull on his finest act for a group of adventurers newly in money. He has her comforting presence behind him as he throws himself into making friends with a brilliant little blue tiefling, whose eyes shine wide like saucers as he pulls cards for her. 

Yasha leaves in the evening, when things go to shit. And he sleeps apart from his circus family for the first time in his life -- his trysts never keep him from his cozy bedroll. He finds himself in bed with a half-orc who desperately needs to loosen up. Yasha is not around to give him any warnings but they survive the first few nights, Molly clinging on to make sure not to gore him with his horns, wishing that Fjord was Yasha instead.

They leave Trostenwald in a cart salvaged from his newly fallen apart family. He keeps performing over his loneliness, juggling his swords out the back of the cart to keep his hands and brain active. He tells bullshit stories to his companions and watches them fail to pick up on them. There is none of the shared glee of a lie well told that he is used to. Each member assumes their act holds up, but their individual miseries shine through.

He breaks at Alfield, drinking alone at a bar. He drinks deep and tries to forget their adventure beneath the earth that spat him out. He watched Caleb break down there, but he only breaks now that his eager audience have departed. 

Later that evening, as he sleeps off the top shelf alcohol, Fjord will wake him from a nightmare of worms and crushing dirt by rolling over to toss him to the floor in his sleep. He wakes with a start, breath still coming quickly as he gulps it in, seeking to fill the deficit from his time beneath the earth. Fjord peers down at him and Molly, now with an audience, takes up his role as the wounded party, thrown cruelly from the bed. Fjord helps him back in with stammered apologies and awkward pats.

He is grateful to have Fjord, even though he is not Yasha and doesn't know the places he likes to be rubbed behind the horns. Sleeping next to Fjord is treating him much better than when he tried to sleep alone the first time Yasha left.

Molly is quite comfortable when they camp by the roadside and they head towards the city. With no bed boundaries, he is free to roll. He often wakes to find Jester curled around him, their horns touching and tails tangled. He thinks he reminds her of someone she's missing. He's happy to pretend for her. He is a performer, after all. 

And it's nice to have another tiefling, he hasn't really met one before. 'Two's a conspiracy', is how the saying goes, but the worst conspiring that they do to fill their traveling days is to draw side by side and sometimes try out each other's clothes and charms, relishing in having more variety in their limited wardrobes.

Performance is their language, more so than infernal. Although it is lovely to be able to chat in what he assumes is his mother tongue. It's certainly Jester's, she speaks it fluently and fluidly, as if she's had elocution training. Jester is a wonderful actor when she wants to be. Not openly lying, she's terrible at that. But she has mastered hiding her sadness behind her bright performance.

Molly only sees her sorrow because it sits in the matching location in his own eyes. They don't mention it. But he thinks she knows. He makes sure to dedicate his act to her when he plays it particularly well.

Time brings Yasha back to him, and he squirms his way back into her arms. They lock Fjord out of the room for a few hours as he settles himself in her arms to fill her in on their adventures. 

He almost topples off the bed when he lunges for his pack to fish out the clover that he found on one of the nights they had spent in an open field. She catches him by the foot and the tail, before carefully cupping the tiny stem in her hands. Once she has secured it, she scoops him up just as carefully.

She finds the fracture in his chain that Beau had fixed the other night, rubbing her fingers down the exposed sections of his horns. Molly smiles, and gives Yasha a look she's seen before when she picked up Beau for the first time. It's encouraging. It's teasing. It's Molly silently approving of whatever future may come for the two of them.

She tries to turn the look back to him and he laughs, impervious. Love is a big thing, he's not yet ready to look it in the face and he's not sure if he ever will be. It's a conversation unspoken. An agreement reached with neither of them opening their mouths. Romance will come later, they have each other now. 

Molly neglects Fjord for the night to sleep outside with Yasha. They stargaze together, as much as is possible under the bright lights of Zadash. Neither of them know the stories of the stars so they make up their own, painting the sky with the familiar circus bullshit of home.

The next night they are invited to girls' night with Beau, Nott, and Jester. Even the concept is awkward. Molly finds himself the most comfortable, having long ago given up aspiring to any concept of gender offered out to him, happiest merely picking the best bits off the gender buffet. He works on Yasha's hair. And then Jester's, when she asks.

The air is thick with things unsaid and secrets obviously kept. Molly doesn't give a shit. He is a performer, he can dance around the obstacles of the past and make it look sexy, if he wants. He pats his hair. It's getting there. It skims his shoulders, now, a far cry from the uneven stubble of the grave.

He finds himself in Yasha's arms once more when activity turns to chatter. Jester flops herself down onto his leg, careful with the sharp tips and curls of her horns. Molly slips his hand into her hair, gently stroking behind her horn where he likes it. He's not sure if he imagines the tears in her eyes before the motion lulls her to sleep, her tail curled tightly around his.

He tucks his head into the side of Yasha's neck and yawns, fingers still tracing circles on Jester's horns. Yasha smiles at him, always gentle, and lifts the ends of her shawl from her shoulders to drape over them both. When she lies back, she ends up with a blanket of Jester and both arms filled with a sulky bastard, Beau and Molly curl into her sides. Molly drapes himself in a practiced sprawl, and Beau with all the grace of Caleb on edge, in that she is the most fucking awkward thing he's ever seen.

He goes to sleep worried that somewhere in the bedding pile, Nott is going to eat his feet sometime in the night. The anxiety must carry into his sleeping self. He finds himself in the claggy darkness of his grave once more. Grave dirt fills his mouth and he can't breathe. His tail and limbs are all caught in the dirt. He can't struggle, and the light of the moon doesn't reach down this far into his shallow grave. He can't breathe. Oh gods above, he can't breathe. He tries to struggle, to force his way out of the dirt. The earth holds him back and he wakes choking on air.

Goblin fingers are stroking by his horn as Nott whispers to him. She takes his hand and holds it tight, assuring him that they'll never speak of this again. He's caught glimpses of her whispering to Caleb when the wizard wakes violently as Molly sits on watch. She mutters sweet nothings that feel as though they're made for another mouth. 'Breathe' she says. As if it's that simple. Molly doesn't think she's ever choked out her last breath over and over again. He accepts her comfort, though. Just for tonight. 'Breathe' she says, as she settles him back to sleep like he's a child, carefully stroking his horns and squeezing his hand.

She is gone when he wakes. Back at Caleb's side she nods when they descend for breakfast. Neither of them mention it. Molly prefers it that way.

He appreciates her nod of understanding when he tells his friends what little he knows of himself. She says nothing about it so they continue as normal, throwing barbed words at each other.

Caleb takes him aside one evening, eyes darting between Molly's horns and the wall, and asks if he needs anything to help with nightmares. Molly kisses his forehead and tells him he's fine. What's another lie between liars, anyway? Caleb nods knowingly and slips a vial into his hand regardless, vanishing back into his reading corner.

The Nein gather around him in their own little ways, with their quiet reassurances of his present and dismissal of his past. Jester spends an afternoon trying to work out how old the body he's inherited is, although he's pretty certain she's got an ulterior motive. He indulges her. 

Beau buys him a drink, and Fjord congratulates her for being nice. She might ruin it by knocking him over a table later in the evening, but he knows it's his present self she's decking, not some dirt buried bastard.

The lights of the tavern shine down on him. The performer, no longer performing, but simply being fine. He is caught in the present, steady in his silly tall boots and ready to follow his feet to whatever may come. He has cast off his grave dirt and he's never going back.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know how it went :))


End file.
